Beyond Entrepreneurship
Questioner: Namaste sir. I'm Vijay Kumar, working here in the Computer Science Department. How can we motivate the younger generation students to become entrepreneurs?
Acharya Prashant: No, we have to address them where they are first. Where do they stand? Why doesn't something called entrepreneurship come naturally to them? If at all entrepreneurship is something so wonderful, what is it within them that takes them in whichever direction they currently go?
So, going by your question, I assume what you're saying is most of the students are content with and aim at just getting placed. Getting safe, secured, and fat jobs from the campus. Right? That's the point you're coming from. There are students who just want these things from life — comfort, safety, luxury, security. These are the things that students want. And as their teacher, you want them to be entrepreneurs.
What is it within the students that makes them want these things? Why do students take the direction they currently take? So, I'm a student, and I'm saying all I want from the campus is a fat job. That's what I came here for and paid the fees for. Right? What matters to me is the admissions office and then the placements office. And that's also the reason I could never be attentive in the classroom. Because all my thoughts were always centered on placements. Right?
Where did the student get these ideas from?
Listener: Sir, because the college and school marketing is like that.
Acharya Prashant: That can be a part of the situation. Yes, definitely. I too have seen huge billboards marketing the same things that you have said. Yes, that's a part of the thing. But that's not always the case. You know, if you look at the IIT for example, they aren't marketing themselves much. They don't need to.
Listener: Actually, education should not be marketed. It should come from within.
Acharya Prashant: Yes. But what I'm saying is that even if the IITs are not marketing themselves in that way, still students go even to the IIT for the sake of just placement.
Listener: Yes sir.
Acharya Prashant: That's how students make their choice between the different IITs in different cities.
Listener: Sir, in that sense, the student's brain itself doesn't work.
Acharya Prashant: But the brain is working, and the brain is making a choice. The question is: where is that choice coming from?
Listener: Because we rooted it in the children when they were in school.
Acharya Prashant: Right. So now, entrepreneurship has to be taught to the parents first.
Listener: Correct, sir. That is exactly how to bring up the child.
Acharya Prashant: Because if the student has been told that the highest ideal of life is consumption and secured consumption — not only am I consuming today, even my future is assured. I have enough to totally fill myself with today, and I also have enough in my pocket and in my bank to take care of the foreseeable future.
If that has been drilled into the student — that this is what you live for, this is what you study for, this is what you marry for, this is what you work for — if that has gone down into the student, why would he not take the route he's currently taking?
How do I motivate them to become entrepreneurs, or whatever, if all that he wants is safety, security, and a fat lot of money to eat? Then it's a question of the social value system. Right?
Listener: Yeah.
Acharya Prashant: Now, with this value system operating from this center, even if I succeed in motivating him or her, what kind of entrepreneur would he become? He will say: the purpose of life, I have been convinced, is consumption and taking care of my own dreams, desires, ambitions. That's the purpose of life.
So, the only reason I have become an entrepreneur is that I can have even more money. That's the difference, he will say, between an employee and an entrepreneur. The employee's growth is limited. The entrepreneur can potentially explode into consumption.
What kind of entrepreneurship is this?
Right from day one, he would be planning an exit strategy. When presenting his business plan to an investor, he would be saying, "Exit guaranteed within four years." This kind of entrepreneurship — exit guaranteed within 4 years — should it be an expression of your love, your heart? It's like getting into a relationship and saying, "You know, exit guaranteed within 4 years."
What kind of relationship is this?
So, entrepreneurship or no entrepreneurship, as long as we are brought up with the wrong kind of values, we would remain the stupid people we are.
As long as it is fed to us continuously in our homes, our schools, in marketplaces, in media, that you exist to be happy through consumption, this fellow will go for whatever job that pays the most. And he will gladly become an entrepreneur too.
As long as entrepreneurship is about making fat bucks, he will become an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship in India is on the rise. All kinds of fancy apps are coming up. We are having, in fact, a raging debate these days. What kind of entrepreneurship is India seeing?
Somebody is saying, "You want a haircut at home? So here is my new fancy app. The barber will visit you at your place.
Listener: Now the dentist is also visiting your place.
Acharya Prashant: The dentist will visit your place. The cinema hall can visit your place. Soon we'll have Mars and the dinosaurs visiting our places. Anything can visit our place. As long as something yields me money, I'll make it visit your place. Anything can visit your place as long as I make some money from it.
And if money is the objective, and some company visits your campus and pays good money, why shouldn't the student go for it? Please tell me.
You know, a lot of entrepreneurship happens because the student went unemployed. If money is available easily through the placement route, the student would take that route. And there are a lot of startups, I know of. They had to forcibly get into entrepreneurship. Nothing else to do. So, borrow some money from here and there and start something. And coincidentally, it just worked. And now they are fabled startups.
One of them is about to come up with an IPO only because the fellow couldn't get a job on campus. Rejected in 18 interviews.
Is there a change of center? Do we understand what entrepreneurship is really about? Can the institution question their pre-existing values and make space for a cleaner set of values to emerge? Can't entrepreneurship be a way of life? Can't entrepreneurship be an expression of your truest self? Can't entrepreneurship be a love affair, an honest way of living this life?
And if it's about honestly living your life, if it's about having a love affair with your work, then probably you don't even necessarily need to be an entrepreneur.
People often ask me, "You know, what you're doing is socio-spiritual entrepreneurship. How did you get into this?"
I said, the first reason — nobody else was doing it. My first effort was to search for a place where such a thing is already happening. And had a place like that existed, I would have happily remained a worker there, a servant there. I would have never bothered to start up. Because it's not about earning this or that, or having a name for yourself, or being called an entrepreneur.
It's about you and your relationship with this little thing called life. I have to work, you see. One works 10, 15, sometimes 18 hours a day. It's the biggest relationship you have. It's a relationship far more intimate than the relationship between you, your son, your daughter, your wife, your parents. Isn't it?
You might say, you know, I'm blindly in love with my wife. You don't spend 18 hours with her every day. You don't. But you spend 18 hours with your work every day. At least I do. And a lot of others as well. That's the most intimate relationship. Shouldn't there be love in it? That's what needs to be taught.
Work is not for the sake of amassing money for consumption. Work is life itself.
And if you are getting into a job as a job, then you are destroying life itself. Work is not a means to get a salary check on the 30th. Work is something that you must deeply be in love with, moment after moment, every day of the month. And then being an employee is good. Being an entrepreneur is good. Because life is good. Life is good.
Are you getting it, sir?
We cannot just push students into entrepreneurship. We cannot say, you know, we now have some funding available on the campus. We now have an incubation cell on the campus. At several campuses, this question has been asked and the functionaries have discussed and they have said now we are even arranging a mentorship program on the campus so that there can be more entrepreneurs.
All that is all right. All that is wonderful. But where's the value system? Where is the right center to operate from? Where is the relationship between you and your work?
Otherwise, somebody could come up with a fresh meat delivery app and keep widening the range of animals that the app can slaughter. Right now it is at 56. Ducks, turtles, tortoises — even alligator meat you can freshly get delivered to your doorsteps. Is that entrepreneurship? What kind of life is this? And the fellows are making really cool money. Exit is on the cards. They'll make their billions and settle somewhere.
Entrepreneurship is a good thing, but a small thing. The real thing is having the right relationship with work. Because work is life. Work is life.
If the right work happens as an employee — wonderful. As a partner — wonderful. And for the right work, if you have to start a concern, become an entrepreneur. But the objective must not be entrepreneurship per se. The objective must be right work.
